A former young footballer has Olympique Lyonnais condemned for “sexual discrimination”

A former player had filed a complaint because young women did not have the same contracts as young men.

The Lyon judicial court ruled in favor, Wednesday, November 29, of a former footballer who attended the Olympique Lyonnais training center, according to information from France Inter. She attacked the club for sexual discrimination. The young woman, now 21 years old and who attended the club in 2017, denounced the absence of an agreement for young girls who enter the training center, while boys see their journey supervised by a such agreement.

Different guarantees between girls and boys

This footballer was able to benefit from the same support as the boys “from a sporting, medical or academic point of view” during her training year, but she was not protected by the same guarantees. For the court, the club’s argument that this lack of agreement is due to the fact that women’s football is not professional does not hold up. In its judgment, the court relies in particular on a law which “prohibits in its first article, under direct discrimination, situations in which, on the basis of their sex, a person is treated less favorably than a no one else is, has been or will have been in a comparable situation.”

“With everything we have done for women’s football for years, we have had a very difficult time finding ourselves attacked on this pitch. We consider ourselves to be a mixed training center, where boys and girls train together regularly “, explained Vincent Ponsot, the general director of football at OL, in August on France Inter. Because, explains the club, no convention was then planned for girls at the level of the French Football Federation.